'The Plague! the Plague! bring out your dead.' <br />Through all the land the cry <br />Rang shrilly forth. 'We bring our dead!' <br />Was murmured in reply. <br />And still no art could stay the sore, <br />By night, by day it ran; <br />Till written on our nation's door, <br />Was 'Lazaret of Man!' <br /> <br /> <br />Beyond the pestilence that sweeps <br />The Oriental power, <br />Where Death, the busy toiler, reaps <br />A province in an hour; <br />To touch and taste, and taste and die, <br />And fill the maniac's grave, <br />Millions essayed, till from the sky, <br />Came Abstinence to save. <br /> <br /> <br />Now we are healed! yet at the pool <br />Lie many in their sin; <br />The 'moderate' mad, the ruined fool- <br />No angel puts them in. <br />Ay, angel Temperance never tires, <br />But healing wing doth plume <br />Where soaring Faith, itself, expires, <br />And Hope is in the tomb. <br /> <br /> <br />Shout, Drunkard! shout! your chain of steel <br />Is sundered, link by link; <br />Shout, Maker! Vender! ye can feel, <br />Shout, Children! ye may think. <br />And Woman, in whose halcyon breast <br />The star of hope doth shine, <br />Would shout-but tears reveal the rest- <br />Lord God! the work is thine.<br /><br />John Pierpont<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-plague-5/
